FEATURES

Every part of running a childcare setting, in one place.

Register, billing, rota, parent comms, safeguarding, pipeline, compliance. The full operational stack of a UK or Irish childcare setting — not six logins and a spreadsheet glue layer.

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01 Run the day02 Run the business03 Run the team04 Run the pipeline05 Run compliance06 Run smarter
01
RUN THE DAY

Sign-in, care logs, photos, zones, ratios — handled.

The screens staff actually live in. Designed for the chaos of pickup time, the precision of a safeguarding inspection, and the speed of a busy 8am drop-off all at once.

Digital register
Day or week view. Auto sign-out at session end. Auto-absent if a child doesn't arrive past your grace period. School-run mode bulk-signs an after-school club back in — and skips anyone whose session starts later.
Flexible session patterns
Run any shape of day — morning + afternoon for a nursery, or breakfast + after-school + a one-off babysitting booking for a club. Each session is signed in/out, charged, and absence-tracked on its OWN times, even two in the same afternoon.
Opening hours
Set your real opening days and times per setting. The register, schedule, rota, billing pro-rata and parent app all honour them — a closed day shows a banner, not a phantom absence.
Tablet kiosk
A locked-down sign-in screen for the door. PIN-based, or QR-scan from the parent app with a code that rotates every 30 seconds. Configurable early-sign-in window stops a child being signed in hours before their session.
Sign-ins survive bad wifi
If the connection drops at the door, sign-ins, sign-outs and absences are kept on the tablet — through a reload — and sent the moment wifi returns. A chip shows what is still waiting. Payments and care logs need a connection.
Daily diary
Naps, meals, nappies, observations, photos — logged in one flow per child or batched across the room. Saves to the diary in real time.
Photo gallery
Multi-photo entries, per-photo captions. Auto-thumbnails, no storage cap on photos. Parents see the entry the moment you save it.
Video on the diary & journal — every plan
Short clips on diary entries and as learning-journal evidence, landing in the parent feed the moment you save. Every plan includes them: 15-second clips (2 per child a month) on Free, 30 seconds (5 a month) on Starter, 60 seconds (10 a month) on Pro. Stored privately in the UK like every photo; parents can download their own child's clips.
Zone tracking
Real-time map of which room each child is in. Push-notify when a zone goes over ratio. Auto-clears at day-end so tomorrow starts fresh.
Live ratios
Per-room and nursery-wide staff:child ratio chip. Turns red the moment you breach. Counts who's signed in, not who's on the rota.
Lunch + meal tracking
Per-day lunch list, allergy badges next to each name, kitchen-side print-out. Special-diet escalation built in.
Menu planner + allergen check
Plan the week's meals with allergen tags on every dish, live cross-checked against each child's tagged allergies — structured tags on both sides, never fragile free-text matching. Any child with an allergy note but no tags is named at the top, so a green tick can never hide an unchecked child.
Incidents + medication
Record an incident (bumped head, allergic reaction) with parent sign-off in one flow. Track every dose of medication administered.
Trips + outings
Scheduled (recurring) or one-off trips. Pull the child + staff list, check ratio, get parent consents. Stays visible in zones for the duration.
02
RUN THE BUSINESS

Invoicing, funded hours, TFC, Direct Debit, card payments.

The bit most childcare software gets wrong. ParentLink handles funding rules for all 5 nations out of the box (EYFS, CfE, CfW, NIPC, Aistear), reconciles TFC payments (England) or NCS (Ireland) from your bank statement, and processes DD + cards without taking a cut.

Invoice generator
Monthly invoices auto-built from attendance + funded hours + extras. Print, PDF, email, or batch-send via the parent app. Re-runnable for corrections.
Direct Debit via GoCardless
Per-nursery API key. Mandate setup, payment requests, retry handling, and failure reconciliation. Webhook-verified callbacks.
Card payments via Stripe
For one-off deposits, extras, or parents who can't do DD. Hosted Checkout flow. Same webhook-verified reconciliation.
Tax-Free Childcare reconciliation
Upload your bank statement; ParentLink matches TFC receipts to the right child by reference code. Per-bank parser. Idempotent on re-upload.
Funded hours tracking (5 nations)
England (EYFS): 15h, 30h, 2-year-old, EYPP. Scotland: 1,140h universal for 3–4yo + eligible 2yo. Wales: 30h Flying Start / Childcare Offer. Northern Ireland: 12.5h EA preschool. Republic of Ireland: NCS Universal + Sponsor. Per-child entitlement tracked per term with regulator-aligned periods, per-child YTD usage visible at a glance. Worklist flags renewals before they expire.
Statements + accounts export
Per-parent statements one click away. CSVs format-locked for Xero, Sage, and QuickBooks — no “manual cleanup” step before import.
Waivers + pro-rata
Mid-month start? Bank holiday? Sick week? Pro-rated charges and per-parent waivers visible on the printed invoice and the statement.
Financial dashboard
Outstanding debt, this month's revenue, payment-method mix, top arrears — all on one screen. Drill-through to individual accounts.
03
RUN THE TEAM

Rota, leave, hours, payroll — all aligned.

A staff system that actually talks to the rest of the nursery. Lateness shows on the rota AND the lateness report AND the ratio chip — without any double-entry.

Visual rota builder
Week, month, or pattern view. Copy a staff member's schedule, apply a default pattern, override a single day. ANY-day patterns for flexible workers.
Kiosk staff sign-in
Staff sign themselves in at the same kiosk parents use. Manager override for forgotten sign-ins. Auto-cleanup at day-end.
My Rota for staff
Each staff member has their own rota page — week + month view, plus an .ics calendar export so shifts appear in their phone calendar.
Calendar subscription feeds
Subscribe to a live rota or nursery-events feed (ICS) from Outlook, Google, or Apple Calendar — shifts and events update automatically, no manual re-import each week.
Leave requests + approvals
Holiday, training, sick, maternity, emergency, and time off in lieu. Staff request from My Rota; managers approve from the worklist. Auto-blocks rota slots once approved.
Hours, timesheets + payroll CSV
Actual hours worked vs rota-ed hours, less unpaid breaks. Printable weekly timesheets a manager signs off, and a payroll CSV with lateness and missed sign-outs broken out.
Time off in lieu
Bank overtime as time owed instead of paying it. Days worked beyond the rota are proposed for approval, never banked automatically, and every entry is a ledger line with a reason and a name — staff can see their own balance.
Ratio compliance report
Per-day, per-room ratio % — flags any minute the nursery slipped below the required ratio. Honours the per-jurisdiction ratio template (1:3 babies E/W/NI, 1:4 in Scotland, etc.). Regulator-friendly across all 5 nations.
Key person assignments
Multi-select key-person pills per staff member, with a cap on how many children each one holds.
Custom permissions
Define a role like “sees medical info, doesn't see billing” once, apply to as many staff as you want. Role definitions are per-nursery.
04
RUN THE PIPELINE

From enquiry to first day, in one flow.

The journey from a parent typing your name into Google to their child eating lunch with you. ParentLink keeps the whole pipeline in view so nothing slips through.

Online booking portal
Your own public booking page, one shareable link. Parents pick a session and real dates — capacity-checked live — for a one-off, a recurring slot, or a whole term block. Instant-confirm or approve-first, lead times and booking windows under your control, branded with your logo and colours.
Embeddable enquiry form
Drop an iframe on your nursery's own website. New leads land directly in your waiting list as a first-touch entry. Honeypot + rate-limited.
Waiting-list pipeline
Configurable stages — Enquiry, Visit booked, Visited, Offered, Accepted. Drag entries between stages; auto-fire follow-up documents per stage.
Site-visit booking
Parents pick a slot from your manager-availability calendar. Auto-confirmation email + SMS. Post-visit feedback form fires the day after.
Document workflows
Send registration packs, medical forms, consent bundles via the parent app. Parents fill, sign, submit. Audit-logged.
Workflow recipes
One-click templates for “Joining documentation”, “Funding setup”, “Consent pack” — your standard onboarding bundles, pre-built.
Two-way parent messaging
Two-way in-app messaging. Email from ParentLink or your own provider; SMS to parents via Twilio, Vonage or MessageBird. Parents choose how they hear from you.
Conversion funnel
Enquiry → visit → offer → joined — see drop-off at each stage. Spot the stage that needs work before it costs you places.
Trial + settling-in
Trial sessions on the waiting list, settling-in periods on enrolled children. Special billing rules for trial weeks built in.
05
RUN COMPLIANCE

Audit, GDPR, retention, inspection prep — without the spreadsheets.

The boring stuff that becomes critical the day you need it. ParentLink keeps every relevant trail without you having to remember it's there.

One-click inspection pack
Fourteen printable sections — readiness checklist, children, staff with DBS and first-aid dates, attendance, safeguarding, care plans, fire drills, risk assessments, medication and more — generated from live data the day the call comes.
Append-only audit log
Changes to children, billing rates and permission grants — logged with old value, new value, actor, role and timestamp, and kept for 24 months.
One-click GDPR export
Answer an Article-15 Subject Access Request yourself, in a couple of clicks — a full JSON export of one child's data including profile, guardians, attendance, care records, photos and financials.
Right-to-be-forgotten
Export a child’s full record in one click, and erase a parent account from inside the app. Erasing a child’s record is handled on request, keeping the records the law requires you to keep.
Document signing + ack
Send a policy or consent form via parent app. They sign with their finger. Audit-trail captures device, IP (hashed), and timestamp.
Safeguarding / curriculum prep
Care records are kept, not deleted on a timer, so what your regulator (Ofsted, CIW, CI, ETI, Tusla) expects you to keep is there on inspection day. Per-child key-information snapshot for inspection day. Incident log filterable by safeguarding category.
Safer-sleep checks
Configurable nap-check cadence per child, room, or nursery. A live countdown board with a chime prompts the next check, a push backstop covers a missed one, and every check is logged for a Reports → Sleep checks audit on inspection day.
Medical + allergy registry
Per-child allergens, dietary needs, EpiPen status, GP details — visible to the key person, kitchen, and on the printed register.
Policy + document expiry
Track which policies expire when, who's read which, who needs to re-confirm. Reminder cards on the worklist before they expire.
Collector + guardian model
Approved collectors and permanent guardians, each with their own door PIN. The kiosk sends the PIN to the server to be checked — the decision is never made in the browser — and repeated wrong guesses lock that device out.
Medication record (MAR)
Regular, PRN and one-off medications with dose, route, schedule and daily maximum. Every administration is logged — given, refused or missed — with an optional witness signature. Parents see their own child's record.
Risk assessments
Activity, premises and outing risk assessments, each with its hazards and control measures recorded against it — ready to hand an inspector, not buried in a folder.
Fire-drill log
Record every drill: the date, who took part, how long the evacuation took, and any notes. Builds the evidence trail regulators ask for, automatically dated.
Two-year progress check
The statutory EYFS developmental review, plus a gap analysis that flags where a group of children is falling behind so you can act before the next check.
06
RUN SMARTER

Power-user features that compound.

The features that pay back the third time you use them. Keyboard shortcuts, automation recipes, custom permissions, and a roadmap that respects your time.

The Today brief — Today, Trends, Forecasts
"ParentLink has found 5 things you need to know today." A ranked brief on your dashboard and in your inbox at 7am every morning your setting opens, in three registers. Today: money outstanding, expiring checks, sellable places. Trends: enquiries up or down week on week, sickness above your own 12-month norm, a weekday running unusually quiet, outstanding rising four weeks in a row. Forecasts: next week's rota measured against your ratios ("about 18 extra staff-hours needed"), certificate and funding renewals stacking up. And where ParentLink can help, the line says what to do next — "Chase 3 accounts owing — £1,240 overdue", "Offer Friday PM to the waiting list" — each one landing where the action happens. Capped at seven, every line explaining exactly how it was worked out; snooze for a day or dismiss for a week (if it's still true, it comes back). Staff see their own day, not the setting's money. Powered by ParentLink Intelligence: ranked from your setting's own data, nothing invented.
Cmd+K global search
Press Ctrl+K from anywhere — type a child's name, a staff name, or a page. Drills into the child profile, not just the children list.
Custom role definitions
Define a role per nursery — e.g. “Senior teacher: full medical, no billing”. Applies to as many staff as needed. Role changes are versioned in the audit log.
Worklist
A single feed of things that need attention — incomplete child records, unsent docs, upcoming visits, ratio breaches, expiring policies. Beats hunting through 12 screens.
Pinned children
Pin the children you check most often (your room, a settling-in, a new starter). One-click access from the home bar.
Dark mode
Light mode by default; dark mode toggle per user. Both modes test under the same accessibility rules.
Resume where I left off
Sign back in and land on the page you were on.
Push notifications
Per-category push prefs for staff. Get notified about safeguarding incidents AND nothing else. Web push works on iOS Safari (since iOS 16.4).
API + webhooks
A documented read-only REST API and HMAC-signed outbound webhooks — both live. Read attendance into payroll, sync invoices to your accounts, fire an event on sign-in or payment. Self-serve scoped tokens, no per-call fees, no Enterprise upsell. See /developers.
Occupancy forecast
Project room-by-room occupancy up to six months ahead — with or without your waiting list, factoring in known leavers and holds — so you can plan staffing and spot empty weeks before they cost you. CSV export for the board pack.
AI draft & polish
Optional AI help (Pro) that turns a few words into a warm, parent-ready observation or message — you always read and edit before it sends. Off by default; switch it on per nursery, powered by Anthropic.

Try it for 14 days. No card.

Sign up takes two minutes. Import children from a CSV or your current provider. Run it alongside what you have today.

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